I'm Phil Bartolotta and I run Custom Fine Metalwork and Engraving in St. Louis, MO
I’ve been a metalsmith for over a decade, creating and embellishing fine jewelry and one of a kind of objects. Working in fine metals and steel alloys I create unique raised, repousse, and engraved pieces.
Growing up I was the kid that got in trouble for doodling in the margins of my textbooks. It wasn’t until after I graduated and got into my late 20s that it occurred to me that I could pursue art seriously.
That was about the time that I met a local art community and one of the gentlemen there, who became a dear friend of mine, introduced me to the techniques of raising and repousse and I just really fell in love with moving metal.
Raising and Repousse are ancient techniques so I started looking to history for inspiration. The Saxons, the Romans, the Greeks, the Persians: hundreds of thousands of amazing examples of this art in museums across the world and it's all free to find. It’s a great deep well of inspiration for me.
That is where I recently found engraving and decided to pursue it, to add to the skills I could apply to my trade. Studying engraving has brought my attention to floral design over the past handful of years. Every culture has studied floral design and applied it to metal and architecture bringing organic shapes to permanent structures.
My favorite part of metalworking has to be that all of the time, all of the effort that goes into designing, layout, sculpting, and creating a piece; at the very end when all is said and done there is a huge feeling of expression and accomplishment. There is something that is going to outlast me that I have made, and I will have made the world a little bit more beautiful.
